The Alan Smithee Round Table: (“Winners & Losers in Tech & AI”)

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to another Alan Smithy Roundtable podcast here on Pro Video Coalition that's brought to us by our good friends at Film Tools. As we are sort of in uh, the early June, we have seasons of this show and we usually take a pause during the summertime to go out and enjoy the uh, wonderful world in which we live in. And uh, we're coming to the end of season four.

Speaker C: We're going to do a little bit

Speaker B: of a recap today, talk about a few things and. Yeah, and just uh, you know, say hello to uh, as always to my good friend Katie Henson and Michael Kamas. Katie, hello. You've got some good news we're going to talk about here in a little bit. Fun stuff.

Speaker C: And Michael, I'm looking forward to touching grass this summer.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we went uh, fishing the other day and caught zero fish over four hours. So that wasn't very much fun. But that's okay. The river was beautiful, so that's a big plus.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: You know, we always start with some news and we're kind of like, what's the news that's popped up over here over the last month? And I don't think we saw a ton of news. I saw that Resolve 21 just got released. Not huge news that was announced at nab, but they got it out to full release in record time. Um, and I have not seen this announced, but I did notice this that um, Resolve on the iPad got updated to 21 as well. That includes the photo page on the iPad, which I think is really cool because if you do much photo work on the iPad, there's a lot of apps for it. But having this in Resolve syncing with your desktop system is kind of cool. So I'm going to explore that in the meantime. But any other big news? I don't know. I don't have anything. I got nothing.

Speaker A: Here in, uh, California, there's been a big push towards a post production tax credit bill, uh, that's been getting a lot of really, uh, really good support. I think it's election time, uh, in California. So, um, I think that's a, it's a really good timing, I think, you know, for various politicians to get behind something that people, uh, particularly in Los Angeles are very, very passionate about. It's actually made progress, um, you know, through the state assembly, um, and so hopefully that will actually uh, help. It'll actually make a bit of a difference. Hopefully it will go through from, from talking to people around town. It does seem to have enough traction that it's likely to go through. Not that it would have any impact in the short term though. Uh, by the time it actually goes through, all gets sort of ratified, signed and the ink is dry. Uh, we'd probably see some effects from that maybe in a year or two.

Speaker B: I always don't understand like, um, when you've got states and municipalities that offer tax credits and incentives for film, video, media creation, it is often the production only and not post production. Am I reading that? Why, why, why is that? Since they're all a very important part of the process.

Speaker A: Oh, look, I think production, physical production probably does bring more, more into the economy. Um, you know, it's a much bigger thing, it's a bit wider. So it's not just a bunch of people in a dark room somewhere. It's actually engaging a lot of local construction and uh, engine catering and all of those other things that go along with it. So I think there's a lot more economic benefit to physical production being in a location than there is post production. That said, in a place like uh, la, I mean, we're fighting even against New York, which has an excellent tax, uh, credit for post production and visual effects, um, and upstate New York even more so. And then overseas a lot of the big, uh, hubs have these post, uh, production and visual effects credits, which is why so much stuff is just going away as budgets. It's not because people don't want to do it here. It's because the budgets are being squeezed for a lot of productions and they have to be able to get as much as they can for as little as possible. They have to find savings. And so if they're able to get tax credits by, you know, taking uh, visual effects and post production elsewhere, then they're going to do that. They have to. And so it's about time. We really, you know, we need the Hail Mary to save, um, the la, uh, industry. So many, uh, industry workers are based out of la. It really is kind of where most people are in the United States. And so, you know, and the decline in work being in LA is affecting the wider economy. So it's starting to really get attention. It's really affecting restaurant economy, uh, you know, shops, you know, uh, it's actually, you know, it's not just, you know, people just don't have the money to spend if they're not working. And so it's really affecting the economy in a much wider sense than just post production workers. So it's starting to get attention. Um, I think folks are fairly optimistic that it will go through. I think we're fairly bullish on that and hopefully it will because I think it'll be really important.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think. What did you say? As much as you can for as little as possible. Is that not like the um, sort of the world that we kind of live in right now? Yeah, you know, we're feeling um, something kind of similar here in uh, Nashville which. And I think this kind of thing happens in a lot of cities and states where they want production. They like the um, you know, the cachet of having movies and films and TVs and stuff made in the areas. But you have to have people willing to work um, for that and to bring the productions in and to work through all the accounting of it. It's, it's not as simple as like, you know, Google, um, spreadsheet being able to work these tax incentives and stuff. What we've had happen here is kind of funny is we've have a, like a state commission that um, works statewide for music television, you know, all entertainment based things. And then Nashville as the capital, of course, country music, huge um, music center in the uh, in the, in the whole entire world. Um, we've not had a very good local film, tv, music, entertainment office. And there was a big push the last couple of years to try to build that into what it once was and what it could be to help just the city itself. But these things are always fraught with political issues and as new administrations come through, priorities changes and someone, you know, who, who sees a budget item worthy in this administration will not see that in the next administration. And we've gone through probably a year plus of building this new um, this new entertainment commission for the city, only to see it now potentially being scrapped as a. There's a little bit of a budget change and you know, where can we cut? Oh, no one needs to give money to, you know, Hollywood. And it's just. And this is, you know, this kind of plays out across the country and um, yeah, any city that wants to work in this space. And that's kind of a, a little bit sad for all of us who work in the space. But you know, what do we do? I guess we could run for office and try to.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's disappointing. Another big thing that's happened in the last week at the time of recording was AI on the lot. It started pretty small and weird and freaky not that long ago. And it's become a really big deal. Uh, this year. It was a huge event where people came from all over the world. So it's really starting to happen. And AI on the lot, it's definitely something to, uh, take a look at if you're not familiar, familiar. Um, but it is a very, very big, a big industry event every year now. Um, and there are a couple of sort of headlines out of that. Um, Gareth Edwards, the filmmaker, um, he, he had a lot of really positive things to say about AI. Um, he's excited about it, he's super into it. Uh, he got a pretty good reception from that actually. He spoke very, very eloquently about how he's using it and what he thinks.

Speaker B: He wasn't booed?

Speaker A: No, he was not. Um, and Amazon, the one speaking of boos though, uh, so Amazon, mgm, uh, announced their AI Creators Fund, uh, has picked three, uh, three filmmakers and greenlit three AI created animation films, um, that must use their new AI Gen AI tool set. They announced some fairly big directors, filmmakers on those, and one of them being Jorge Gutierrez, uh, who unfortunately, after he sort of announced that he was one of those first filmmakers going to be part of this, got a lot of online backlash immediately. Um, it got really nasty really quickly. He was getting death threats and so the very next day he announced that he was backing out of the project. I think that is extremely, extremely unfortunate. I think that's just crazy. I think people should have the opportunity to innovate. People should have the opportunity to take corporate money to make art. Doesn't matter how you make it, there's still jobs, right? Um, you know, there's no make movie button. So there will be jobs in those films. And uh, and it's not insignificant. So, uh, it's. That's really, uh, really unfortunate. Um, and I really was really disappointed to read that that was happening. Insiders are saying it, it doesn't appear to actually have been his fans. It really does appear to have been just trolls and anonymous accounts. But it's really unfortunate that somebody was really bullied into pulling out of a, of, of being really well funded for a really big project. And that's just really. That, that's shitty, guys. That's really shitty.

Speaker B: Are the other two still in right now?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Have they been named? Have the other two come out publicly?

Speaker A: Okay, um, so take a look. So I'm going to put some things in the show notes. I don't want to get into it too much. Uh, here. Um, I'm going to put some links in the show notes. Uh, if you weren't part of, if uh, you weren't part of that discourse, so you can kind of catch up on it.

Speaker B: I think it's not shocking though, that Amazon would do this, that a tech company would make this offer. I mean, I think that's kind of

Speaker A: a. I think it's wonderful. I think a lot of the, uh, studios are doing that right now. I mean, it's funny. I think we used to. There used to be a term called faang companies. It still kind of is. Right? And it was the biggest tech companies in the world. Facebook, Apple, uh, Amazon, Netflix and Google. That's fang. F aang.

Speaker B: Oh, F A, N G. Okay.

Speaker A: F aang. So the Fang companies, they were the big. It, uh, was a term for big tech. Right, okay. And that was sort of pretty common five years ago, ten years ago, faang. Well, all the faang companies are now media companies and which is pretty interesting. So faang is no longer now just big tech. It's media. And media and big tech are, uh, now the same thing. And frankly, where we are now in media aren't. I don't really care where the money's coming from as long as somebody's funding our ability to do what we are compelled to do. You know, I think we have, you know, some of these tech companies, of course they have these tools, um, and they only have these tools because somebody's asking for it. Uh, you know, people are asking for these tools. Um, the ones that people don't end up wanting are going to end up getting shuttered. That exists. That has been a thing. You know, there are certainly tools that are helping people do their jobs, uh, better be more creative because they don't have to do some of the boring stuff. You know, we sit here and talk about AI tools all the time on this podcast and how they're helping our workflows. So look, Amazon, of course, you know, they're a big tech company. They have the technology and the money around with it. Sorry.

Speaker B: And the money and the money and

Speaker A: they're playing around with it.

Speaker C: I think the only thing I'd augment on that is Amazon, uh, for years. It's almost every two years, hey, there's a new program that AWS has for media and it always feels like sometimes a solution is being created for a problem that doesn't exist yet. And I get, and I get and I get the forward thinking, like we're looking five years into the future, not five months, but a lot of times there's, okay, Amazon has a solution, but do I really need it? Do I really need this shiny thing? Can I still do? So there's definitely A hey, this may look cool, but let's really take a look at it and see if the economics shake out. Because if there's one thing we've learned over the past few years of contraction is that we're counting every penny. And when you're doing things in the cloud, your cost is variable. Uh, and a lot of times that becomes untenable when you can't predict what your bill's going to be next month.

Speaker A: And we're starting to see that now. We're starting to see now everyone's kind of going away from this all into the cloud thing, where everyone was saying cutting costs, we've got to cut capex, we're going OPEX only. We're doing everything in the cloud and realizing that's really expensive. But, uh, look, I think when it comes to these things, I'm not saying that I love it, because I think everything should be made with AI. That's not it. Some of these innovations and these technological experiments, I'm all in, they can fail. I hope they fail, because failure is what drives things forward and it helps us learn and figure out what we want to do. This is the thing that gets us to the thing, as I like to say. Um, and it's the same as, if you think about it on another side of things. Robotics. Right now, everybody's making these dancing humanoid robots right now. Nobody wants a dancing humanoid robot. That's not the point of it. A robot that can run the Boston Marathon, who cares? Because the thing is that the most efficient robots don't look like humanoids. It's actually kind of silly. But what they're doing is they are using those things that are kind of cool and fun, and we get to play around and be creative in order to develop something that might actually be useful. And that's what it's about. Spatial awareness and finer point engineering and robotics. It's the same thing with generative AI and filmmaking. And frankly, I love that we're doing these experiments. I love that someone's funding us to take risks. We haven't seen that in over a decade. These studios haven't been funding filmmakers to take risks. And now we're starting to see studios funding filmmakers to take risks on something that probably will fail. Generative AI, films, verticals, all of these things. We don't know the outcome. We don't know if it's going to make money or succeed. But you know what it's doing. It's creating jobs and it's letting people be creative, and it's funding them to do so. So I'm all about it. It doesn't mean that it's the thing. It doesn't mean I'm bullish on it. It doesn't mean I'm trying to push everybody to do a make movie button because as you know, that's not where I stand. But I do think it's cool because it's what we get to take risks, we get to innovate and we get to learn from. I think that's very, very cool. And I think we should be supporting folks that get the opportun do that so that we can all kind of just play, you know, and it doesn't have to work. And I like that. So I don't know. I'm into it.

Speaker B: Well, we got a little bit of that with the uh, the backrooms, uh, sensation that has just popped out here, right, Recording this, which was the, the YouTuber who made a series of pretty funky interesting. Like when I first watched some of the shorts, I'm like, wait a minute, what? This is. This is all it is. But then I'm like, you know, he thought of it, he executed it, he saw an idea and he executed a thing and people liked it. M. And as cheesy as they seem, sometimes they're kind of addictive to sit there and watch through them. And I was like, okay, good for him for, for being able to pull that off. Because we often like, you know, lament that, oh, I could have done that. You know, that's not a good idea. Like that's stupid. Who anybody could do that. But you didn't do it. And nobody did it but this one person. So kudos to that one person for doing that thing that you thought you could do. And I think that's kind of what he did and he what the $10 million budget for the movie. And you know, it's. How much is it gross? Of like a lot more than the budget.

Speaker C: So as of as of the recording today worldwide, uh, I think it was 118 million. I think was 80 domestically. But uh, this is a 20 year old. A 20 year old with $10 million. And not only is the, there's the immense success of that, but obviously he started his career on YouTube, which is uh, where um, uh, Curry Baker started as well, uh, with Obsession, which is out in theaters right now. So Keaton, uh, and I were kind of talking about this earlier. It kind of feels like the next generation of the uh, Robert Rodriguez, El Mariachi and the Kevin Smith and Clerks where there's uh, the folks who are the new breed of filmmakers who come from the non traditional way of making films, uh, and the first filmmakers, uh, like Danny Boyle, right, who uh, did 28 days later on TV, right. It was the first kind of, kind of consumer prosumer digital camera that was able to propel him, uh, into the world stage. So uh, I very much like this that we're being able to see these different points of view, uh, without coming up through the traditional Hollywood system.

Speaker A: Look, it's actually very delicious to the traditional Hollywood system, to be honest. Um, I think finally horror's having a moment because the system, as crunch for money as it is, is realize that horror is an excellent return on investment. Um, horror is relatively cheap.

Speaker B: Blair Witch Project, well, it's relatively cheap

Speaker A: to make and it returns really, really well if you do it right. And one of the things that is really important, um, and Eli Roth actually pointed this out, um, which I think really struck me was that horror is a particular genre that has an enormous following. People will show up. The fan base is rabid, so to speak. Right. No pun intended. Um, but you have to. But they will only do it if you put any old, big old director out there. The fans won't show up. It has to be someone that the fans that already has a following, um, that the fans already love. So really the easiest way to determine that is to go to YouTube and figure out which horror directors have the biggest followings. Who's viral on YouTube, who's got the biggest fan following, because those fans will follow them to the theaters and the studios and traditional media are starting to realize that. And they're starting to actually pick those people up off YouTube, say, hey, I'm going to give you a bigger budget than you've ever had, which is actually tiny for us. And they realize that the return on investment's very high. It's still a risky thing for a lot of studios. A lot of studios are still not into it because they're a little scared of the idea of horror. Horror hasn't traditionally been mass market, um, but they're starting to realize that, you know, that that may be necessary and it does reflect a larger trend right now of the industry starting to um, kind of just turn away from traditional legacy studios who have largely failed us, I think, as an industry, um, and are ah, saying, all right, we're just going to make things ourselves. We're starting to see this trend of um, you know, going back to production companies being the ones actually funding their own productions. And then the studios Might pick it up, they may not, they might self distribute. Um, they, you know, people are just making content anyway, um, and not waiting for a studio. And, and in many cases, in fact, I think in was this season, we actually interviewed, um, a content creator who was offered a Netflix deal who turned it down because she said she makes more money on YouTube and she has more control, more creative control. And I think we're seeing a lot of that, um, you know, coming through. So, um, yeah, I like that trend. I like that trend of going back to being a little more pure about what we do and just doing what we love and being supported and paid for that.

Speaker B: There you go. Uh, speaking of trends. So we were talking about like what's this? How should we uh, wrap up our year end season show here? Even though it's not the end of the year technically. Um, we each picked a trend that we saw from the previous year to have a little quick discussion about what that trend was. And perhaps this was the biggest trend in our minds. I don't know how we. But we each picked one.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And we're gonna go through them.

Speaker A: Well, shall I start? Because it's really picking up what I was just saying.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: So yeah, mine is definitely that trend towards, um, just to be explicit on the podcast, bleep it if you want. But it's, ah, fuck the big guys. I'm gonna do what I want. Um, do we have an explicit tag on that?

Speaker B: I don't know if we do or not.

Speaker A: Can't help myself. Um, but no, I've talked about this a lot. Right. I think I blame a lot of the decline of our industry on um, you know, during the boom time, uh, the big bubble, you know, a lot of uh, the smaller companies were, and privately owned companies were bought up by the bigger companies. Corporations, in order to do that, they funded it by selling a lot of stock to the hedge funds. And then the hedge funds don't like, uh, any kind of market volatility so they're selling off those assets. Right. So hence a lot of closures of a lot of these boutique medium companies, the kind of places that most of us have worked at at some point. What's interesting is we're starting to see this trend of them getting bought back by the original owners or the artists or the people who work there. Um, and we saw this, uh, quite notably with two companies, uh, Light Iron, um, that was, uh, sold by Panavision and bought back by three of the staff there with a little bit of crowdfunding, uh, in There as well. They got to keep the name, they got to keep a lot of the assets, they got to keep the location and they got to keep it going. And it's back to private ownership. Uh the same thing with Mr. X, big visual Effects. One of the regional owners reacquired it back from Technicolor. I think it's very, very cool. We're also starting to see this real rise in production companies not trying to wait for studios to give them money to make stuff. They are getting the funding themselves, making it and then, and then shopping it around and the studios are liking that too. A ah, lot of my colleagues who are studio executives are saying yes please, we don't have any money. Um, we'd much rather buy something that's already made. And um, I think that's working really well. And we're seeing the rise of some of these uh, production companies that we saw as indies a few years ago being real big now, uh, like a 24 and neon and winning Oscars in that because they can take risks. People are starting to also the trend uh, of enjoying things that are a bit more indie. I think people are starting to go back to the human made and if you heard me talk about these things over the last 10 or 15 years, I think a long time ago I predicted that um, the rise of Gen AI uh or what I think I called at the time computer made, ah content that would eventuate in a trend towards people really putting more value on things that are very weird, bespoke and human made. And that's exactly what we're seeing. I think now that folks, now that it's easy for people to. Everybody's got the ability to make something even if it's crap, um for free essentially ah, quote unquote um on an app um then they don't see the value in Genai made content ah because to them it's free. I could do that at home, why would I pay for it? It's like going to a restaurant and getting a meal that you could have cooked at home. And so what people are really seeing uh value in today more and more is the indie bespoke, weird human made, auteur driven stuff. And I'm seeing that trend uh, really, really uh, playing, playing out.

Speaker B: And a lot of it is unique and cool and good and something you've never seen before. It's not a sequel, it's not a remake.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Which is, which we've been just diluted with over the last decade, you know, so it's it's always great to see those unique, um, and original stories which there's just not enough of. So kudos to them.

Speaker A: What about you, Michael? What do you got? Your trend of the year?

Speaker C: My trend of the year? Well, you know, it's no secret that, um, I've been on the AI train for a while.

Speaker A: Um, obviously trend of the year, M. Michael.

Speaker C: Obviously.

Speaker B: Wow. How original.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm sorry. You know, luckily I'm not a, um, my blinders aren't on. Um, and I'm um, and I understand the force, the trees, but with how much AI noise there is over the past year, I thought I'd go over who the kind of winners and losers are in our space. So, uh, obviously, because majority of my time is spent in the kind of editorial space, we have the big four, right? We've got the Adobes, we've got the Avids, we've got the Apples and we've got the Black, uh, Magics. And I, I, I think the two front runners are obviously, uh, DaVinci resolve from Blackmagic and, and Adobe, um, Premiere Pro, uh, despite all the

Speaker B: Premiere Pro, they dropped the Pro. You know, that's big news from the year.

Speaker A: Oh, it's for everyone.

Speaker B: Just Adobe Premiere.

Speaker C: So we're killing pros, we're killing Mac pros, we're killing Premiere pros?

Speaker B: Looks that way.

Speaker C: Um, well, maybe we should just get into the discussion of what's a pro. Katie, why don't you start? No, I'm not gonna have us go there. Um, despite all the misgivings on, you know, some of the things Adobe faces here with lawsuits and, and uh, the push for Firefly and Genai. I think this year, uh, Adobe has just outpaced everyone, just across the board, whether it's with AI tools for video or stills or audio. They've won awards across the board. Uh, they've been releasing things, uh, left and right and putting it in beta from day one. So I think they clearly walk away there with blackmagic in second. I, um, think, uh, Apple obviously has had a lot of issues with Siri. Uh, there's now discussion of Apple just saying, look, we'll license someone else's AI, which is kind of what Avid's doing. Because Avid, who has traditionally said, look, all your machines need to be air gapped, can't put them online. Now they say if you want to use AI, uh, that isn't their phrase. Find or Script Sync, you need to put your machine online and then have a subscription to Google and use API Key. So they're the only ones that really have said well we're not going to develop our own. You can gleam from that what you will. We can have a drink and discuss why I think that's why that's going on.

Speaker B: But you got to do what you got to do.

Speaker C: Got to do what you got to do to look good to be purchased. Um, yeah, uh, who also won is um, uh, when we look at the big AI companies so the anthropics with Claude and the OpenAI and uh, the Google and Gemma, um, I think Claude, uh, Anthropic, uh, is probably the front runner not only because of the middle finger to the uh, US government, uh, on using their AI for nefarious purposes, but um, they've been able to make uh, uh, massive leaps and bounds uh this year. And the best part of that is uh, being able to use MCP servers. So being able to programmatically work with uh, other tools that are local without having to put it online and expose it and have a public endpoint and it's just a lot easier to develop using Claude for things like that. So I think Anthropic walks away with that.

Speaker A: Apart from Sora.

Speaker C: Sora. Sora would be a big loser. Uh, that would be Microsoft, right, that as you mentioned earlier Katie, you know Sora was killed. Uh, they made an agreement with Disney to uh, be uh, able to put things uh, to manipulate some Disney owned IP with Sora's technology. And not uh, too long after that announcement was made, that was killed. And I think anyone who looks at some of the numbers on how much that's going to cost to keep that running, I was hearing that they were losing tens of millions of dollars a day uh, on that. So Sora, yeah that's a big thumbs down loser in my book.

Speaker B: Sorry, like we didn't see that coming.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I mean I get uh, you know, you get your shotgun of AI and you shoot your shot and see what hits and if it doesn't hit, you pull the plug. So they were hemorrhaging money and it makes sense for them to pull it. Uh, lastly keeping up with um, AI is the other real winner this year in AI, uh, is open source. This is the first time in tech history that open source is uh, wide enough, open enough and democratized enough that we're developing models and technology uh, without having to rely on a few big corporate overlords. Uh, so things like using uh, um, uh, openclaw, which you know now OpenAI has but uh, Hermes for example, uh A harness that can use multiple AIs including on prem AI. So we're now able to use things like Deep Seq and a bunch of others that can run local. And now with Nvidia and their Sparks and uh, their DGX Spark and of course the announcement they had a couple days ago regarding their new chips, this means that we can deploy AI on Prem, that we don't have to utilize uh, models that are in the cloud. So I think that's a massive win for uh, the general uh, tech users. Um, and uh, it frees you from having to use the cloud. So I think uh, the public kind of wins out on that one.

Speaker B: Assuming you can buy a Mac Mini to run something like that on.

Speaker C: Right, definitely. Uh, but uh, the good thing about Apple technology is because of the unified memory is that it may run a little bit slower but you can load larger models. So yes there is going to be a, as Katie pointed out earlier, CapEx versus OpEx. Right. Are you going to uh, uh, pay per month for tokens in the cloud or are you going to run it local? Uh one of the things we've also seen is the mixture of agents which is having dedicated agents to do very uh, specific tasks and those are smaller models that can run local and then you orchestrate uh, using ah one model to control those sub models or sub agents. So uh, this is only going to get easier to deploy on Prem. Uh, but yes there obviously will be an outlay of cash to get those machines uh especially during the crunch which I think uh, you have some insight in.

Speaker B: Well that was my big story for the year is just the skyrocketing cost of, I keep always say the skyrocketing cost of SSDs because that's where I have seen it most and mainly where a lot of my clients have seen it most because um, has not been uncommon in the last number of years since small affordable SSDs became a thing. They're, they're high capacity, they're fast, they're portable, they're small, they're relatively cheap. So people would buy them up by the dozen for productions, for transporting media. Um, you know there, I remember there was a time back in the day I'm going to use back in the day when you had a production and you had spinning hard drives and we would have to offload uh, you know all that media shot during the day onto LTO tape for backups and having multiple copies, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then when SSD'S became ubiquitous. You just buy a few SSDs and you leave the set with, you know, two, three, four copies of, um, everything that was shot in a relatively quick amount of time. But, you know, now that the SSDs have gone through the roof, that's, that's, that adds a significant cost to a lot of productions. And I've seen them, um, you know, skimp and maybe only buy one set, that they leave the, the shoot with one set of one copy of the media, which is incredibly dangerous. Um, I've seen repurposing of old SSDs, I've seen, you know, I can go into my drawer over there in my cabinet and pull out these old, you know, FireWire 800 drives and these old, you know, old Thunderbolt spinning discs that have, you know, pretty much I should just have just thrown in the trash. But we're seeing people repurpose these to back up these old, these old SSDs that were sitting on the shelf as archive copies. And it's just, I mean, people are getting very creative because they've just become so damn expensive that they can't afford. I say they myself. Like, I would often buy these things, like, hey, a new job coming up. I'm going to get my own SSD for my own backup copy. And it's just, it's become not possible, as expensive as these things have gotten. But then, you know, and we were talking about this like there's the beyond, just the portable USB 3 USB C SSD drives. SSDs go into so many different things. The car you drive, the computer that you're running, you know, there, there are many different places where we're seeing all these costs go through the roof with GPUs and even spinning drives. I think, you know, Michael and I were talking before we started recording here that even spinning drives are getting really expensive because people are trying to buy those as an alternative. And it's just, and I don't, I don't know if anybody has seen a, uh, projection of when these costs might come down or if they will ever come down again, which is really kind of a, a scary, scary thought depending on how much we depend on these things. So I think that was a huge story and we don't see an end in sight.

Speaker C: I'd also add that it's not just, um, the pricing, it's the availability. Right? So scarcity obviously is jacking up the price, but because people aren't carrying a lot of inventory because of the cost, it also means out times are massive. So we're seeing like, uh, maybe not individuals, but corporations, enterprise saying, um, we need to get X amount of computers. How much is that going to cost? Well, here's the price and that pricing is good for the next week, right? Because that pricing is fluctuating so incredibly much that um, there is no way to predict what that pricing is going to be. And uh, the folks that I speak with are saying this is going to go well into next year. Uh, and there really isn't, uh, an end date as to when this may stop. And even if we work out, you know, and I'll tiptoe around the political issues that may keep, you know, the channel, so to speak, uh, from being able to house transportation, uh, of this technology that won't solve the problem. Um, there's too many other resources and big corporate needing those, uh, parts and pieces that this isn't going to end anytime soon, unfortunately. And, and you did bring up things like lto and we are seeing people say, you know what, let's use lto. But you also have to keep in mind that, that if you're jumping into lto, you need to buy a computer. That computer has to have parts, the right to the lto and that pricing for the LTO machine is now three times what it was prior. So yeah, there's, there's just no way around it, unfortunately.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's uh, you know, we saw even full brands that left the market because they decided to sell just to enterprise and to data centers and things like that. So it really put, you know, as often in situations like this, the squeeze happens to the consumer first and we are, you know, the lowly consumer who bears the brunt of a lot of this stuff. And um, yeah, you didn't even mention the political situation in Taiwan where if, you know, if we ever saw, you know, China trying to take over Taiwan and how much of this technology and how much of this stuff comes from, from, you know, such a, such a small country and like how that can impact the situation even, even more. So there's a lot of, a lot of things to think about, you know, as you're, as we're, as we work in this little media and entertainment space and what we have to purchase and what we have to use. And I think it, I think it's made, it made the year, uh, the fiscal year that ended, you know, different for a lot of folks because they're looking at some costs they didn't think they would have to, have to bear just a few years ago because this has happened pretty fast. Like it feels like this, the spike in SSDs and these, in these high costs really happened relatively quickly with a lot, without a lot of people realizing it until they went to purchase a drive and they're suddenly like what the heck has happened here?

Speaker C: So I think, I think uh, we uh, need a palate cleanser. I think we need something positive to talk about and that's why I'm excited to hear uh, Katie's news. So Katie, maybe you can share uh, the happy news.

Speaker B: Happy is good.

Speaker A: Sort of sometime last year I think as we were, as I was looking at, as I do industry trends and um, and a lot of my friends and colleagues at post houses were sort of terrified about becoming free um, agents and outdoor cats for the first time, uh, when they'd always been indoor cats and asking me help, help, what do I do? And I've been kind of throwing around a lot of ideas for a long time. I spent some time building ah and running post houses and could really see even a long time ago that the business model was not really sustainable. So I was thinking about how, how what a sustainable future post. What is Post House going to look like in the future? So late last year I, I figured, you know what, I think if I'm going to do what I want to do and build the future of a post house, I kind of have to start doing it in 2026. And so I started doing it. I've, I've cashed uh, in all my chips, I'm going all in um, and I've started a little company called Daily Special. I'm building what I've always wanted to build. Um, it is a membership based kind of Soho House type network, ah of premium post facilities that members can use for coworking space and for premium post facilities. So it's a post House but it's open to all members. Um, like you said, for both co working or for actually for using premium rooms and facilities, edit bays, color bays, adr, vo, sort of podcast, recording booths, really sort of just, just what you need and nothing that you don't. It's also got meeting rooms and great coffee. I think it's really, really important that it's actually a nice place to go. So members, they get to book what they need only when they need it. So rather than having to go to a four wall or a post house and book out a bunch of time, use their IO, use their storage, all of that kind of stuff, none of that. No producers, no storage, no IO, no Additional fees. There's a platform that runs everything, so it includes scheduling, BYO cloud workflows, as well as hiring, billing and bidding for your clients. Um, and so it's really a platformized version of a Post House that is for freelancers and smaller productions. So a lot of indie productions even are, ah, talking about how they need to squeeze costs. They don't have the padding room for all the overhead and a lot of the studios don't need it anymore anyway. They want you to use their data center, they want you to use their stor and also some of their tools for making deliverables and all of that dailies and that sort of thing. So I'm really building towards that and giving people the flexibility and the transparency to kind of pick and choose a la carte what it is that they need. And I want to build these in the neighborhoods where people live. I think that's really important. One of the great things about being a freelancer is not having to commute, especially if you live in a city like New York or la. Um, and so I'm aiming to build the very first facility actually in my neighborhood in Northeast LA. Uh, the city estimates that's where around 4,000 post production workers live. So that's ah, so that's where I'm putting the first facility. And I'm also looking at New York, uh, as a very, very fast follow out in Brooklyn. And so, um, I'm really, really excited for this idea. Um, and I'm also building it around community first. And so, you know, I think that's something that a lot of people miss about being in a Post House is, uh, the lunch table. People keep telling me they missed the lunch table. And so I really want to make sure that people are able to be working in a place, um, working out of a place where other people are working on different things. Um, all of our fellow nerds can kind of be together and hang out. And I want to make it affordable and accessible and I want to have community programming, um, tech demos, vendor partnerships, all of that. And so I'm really, really excited. I have, I could talk about this forever. It's kind of been, it's something that I'm really, I'm really passionate about. I really believe in it. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, feel free to kind of follow along my journey. I'm sharing everything, being super transparent about it.

Speaker C: What's the timetable right now?

Speaker A: Right now, uh, because I'm starting from zero. Um, and so right now I'm hoping to have the Funding and have everything ready and the build out done to aim to open the first facility or facilities end of next year. So I know that's a little while to wait. I know that people are kind of like, I want something now. You know, I'm open to looking at, um, you know, I've been speaking to a lot of my colleagues at post facilities. You know, I've been open to kind of, you know, looking at opportunities to start a little earlier. Um, but also I want to make sure that the platform, which is really, really important that it works, that people can have that easy connectivity to their at home cloud or provided, um, you know, back end. And so really, really that's really important that we get that right. So I want to make sure that we don't do it, uh, that we don't do it fast, we do it right. And you know, so I'm going to be having people beta testing that pretty hard, uh, for a fair amount of time. And we want to get it, we want to get it right.

Speaker B: You know, I want to point out something to, um, perhaps some young folks that may be listening to our podcast. Perhaps they're still in school, they're just, you know, especially if you're in high school and have yet to hit the college circuit yet. Children, listen to me here. Um, I have taught a class at NAB for many years about like, what, what, what do I wish I had learned when I started out in my career, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the first things I mentioned is, is, um, business classes, Business being business savvy, whether you're getting a business degree, whether you're minoring in business, or just taking a bunch of business classes, of which I did very little, regrettably, now that I am a grown adult, um, what Katie is trying to do, working to do is attempting to do is doing as we speak here is something that takes not just like I'm going to go on to ChatGPT and have them set me up a website business launch go. It takes a lot of forethought. Not in the technology of how do you edit, how do you color grade, how do you animate, how do you do visual effects, but how do you set up a business that can be sustainable and potentially have the capability of being profitable and running long term, hopefully long after Katie departs this God's green earth that we live on. That's what's difficult about trying to do something beyond just the creative thing that we all love to do. And I Think that that's often not discussed, especially for young people trying to get into businesses like this is if you can build a foundation where you've got an idea of how to run something like this or build something like this. And that often involves understanding business. And, um, it is a scary thing to step out and try to do, which I'm sure that you put a lot of thought into this. Uh, but it takes a lot of guts and it takes a lot of determination and risk as well. But if you have kind of that business sense or at least a basic understanding or people you can go to to help with this, then you have a much better chance of success.

Speaker A: Look, I'm really, really fortunate to have a lot of excellent support and mentorship, uh, from some of the most impressive and incredible people in this industry. The kind of people that, um, probably before I got to know them better, I was fairly starstruck by. And so I think one of the things that I'm really, um, thankful for is being surrounded by people that I truly admire and look up to and who are supporting me in this. So it's really exciting. And like I said, I'm announcing early because I want the community to be part of this. I want the community again. This is part of that trend of going back to artist owners. And I think what's really important to note, and this is part of what I talk about a lot is Hollywood is the corporations, but the industry is the people. And I think that we need to get back to focusing on the people, the people that do the work. And I'm building a business that supports the people doing the work to do the work and to do it outside of the traditional model. And that traditional model will always exist and there will always be productions that need to go to a full service post house. But we're seeing more and more that there are folks who don't work at those post houses who also want to work on those productions and need a place to be that they can't work out of their house necessarily and work on a big show, um, as well as just wanting a place to be around others. Um, sometimes folks are, uh, experiencing a bit of a ceiling as freelancers, uh, particularly colorists are having that issue. But then there's also folks that are doing all kinds of things, um, outside of that traditional, uh, ecosystem, and they're feeling really alone in it. And there's a lot of expenditure and having to get your own, buy your own system and set up your own studio. So, yeah, I'm excited to Be building something that's for the people. Um, and I've always been part of supporting the community and really focused on that. Uh, it's a big part of my passion. I've always been interested in supporting people to do the cool stuff that I'm not talented enough to do myself. Um, and so that's what this is all about.

Speaker B: Well, I think we will definitely follow along, and, um, we'll talk about it more and, um, let us know how we can help community. How can we help Cadence? So, yeah, keep up the good work, and let's. Let's keep talking about it as, um, as the, uh, the years move along here. Is that your one cool thing? Your one cool thing is your business?

Speaker A: It is not my one cool thing.

Speaker B: Oh, it's not? Okay.

Speaker A: It's not my one cool thing. So what? So I. I'm a big fan of makers. I love following makers. I love people who invent things that don't need to be invented, but really fun. It's, you know, playing with their toys again. It's the stuff that I am not talented enough to do myself. I love to see other people doing it. It's very inspiring for me. So two of my favorite makers, uh, there's some really big ones online. Simone Geertz, um, is one of them. But I'm also a big, big fan of, uh. Oh, my goodness. What's his name? Matty Bendetto, uh, who does unnecessary inventions, is his, uh, company. And he came out with something, uh, recently that I absolutely freaking love. I'm so into it. It's called a music video time machine. If you know me and my obsession with music videos, that is absolutely me. Uh, so the music video time machine, uh, he built this little box. It looks like a little TV with a very, like, um, 90s sort of windows, uh, interface. And it has a dial, and you dial up a year, and it pulls up from YouTube a music video from that year. Um, and you can dial in a genre and a. And it's just so fun. It's so silly. It's a physical object. Took some engineering. I mean, this guy does all kinds of things. He 3D printed a working 3D printer. I mean, it's like, I love that stuff. Simone Garrison used to make useless robots. Um, she's also become quite famous recently for doing the laundry chair, uh, which is, you know, a beautiful chair that is actually for putting your, uh, not quite dirty laundry on.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: In the corner. Um, I love this stuff. I love this idea of people being super Innovative and having the ability to build something, um, that is kind of useless but super, super fun. So I was super into the music, uh, video time machine. I, uh, will put a link, uh, to his YouTube video on it in the show notes and I guarantee you, you will go down a rabbit hole. It's really, really cool. So, all right. What about you, Scott?

Speaker B: That's fantastic. I, um, uh, this isn't my, my one cool thing, but often at the office I'll turn on Pluto TV because they've got all those music video channels and just let them roll because it's like I haven't seen that. What? I haven't seen that in forever. I haven't seen that in forever. And uh, yeah, that's so much fun. Mine is kind of simple and dorky, but I finally found a book bookmark manager that I truly love and I've been through so many of them over the years, saving, uh, bookmarks for, you know, pro video coalition related stuff for things I want to read later. You know, there's so many of those things that have come along, but the one I have finally settled on and I gave myself six months and if I don't ditch it after six months, I'm sticking with it. And it's Raindrop IO. It's so simple. It just saves your bookmarks. You can install an extension in your uh, web browser, on your desktop, on your mobile device, on an iPad, on your phone. And then you see you want to save a bookmark, you just send it to Raindrop, put it in the category, tag it and there it is. It's simple, it's elegant. I'm using the free version and I've seen no desire. I have not had a need to upgrade to the non free version just yet. Yeah, a bookmark manager that is simple and works and I really like it. It's Raindrop IO. I think it's so cool to finally find one.

Speaker C: You and your down to earth stuff, Scott.

Speaker B: Gee, I'm sorry. Simple is better sometimes.

Speaker C: Speaking of simple, I'm a huge fan of automation. And when I say automation, I'm not just trying to disguise the word AI. It's automation being able to roll series of executable actions into a string that with one button press or with using your voice you can kick that off. And Scott, you've reviewed over the years a ton of these tools that are supposed to do that, right? Like using Stream Deck or using.

Speaker B: I love these things.

Speaker C: Loupedeck right now owned by, uh, Logitech Logitech. So, um, I've been doing a lot more in the production space, especially with Broad with uh, podcast studios and of course stream decks are everywhere. But how do you tie all those things that you need a device to do into one button press? And you can use Stream deck software or you can think use things like BitFocus companions, uh, which is free open source and talks to over 800 different types of products. So you can tie strings of commands to these button presses then plug in a stream deck and now you don't have to know and I'll explain what I mean by this. You don't have to know how to be a TD to throw a show. Now obviously you should probably uh, uh, know the basics but you don't have to learn how it's laid out on a particular stripe. Uh, you can now use the buttons uh, on the stream deck so you can quickly hit a key press and you know what it does and you can design the buttons to make it look like something you understand. So it may not be for you, but it may be for someone junior on your team who has to do some recording and doesn't know how to run a Tricaster or to run a Ross Carbonite or run uh, a quick link. Ah, you can run uh, this all through a stream deck and then you can can certainly then tie this into post production. So when you need to do these multi step workflows and edit uh commands that are repetitious in your nle, you can tie that into the stream deck as well. So uh, this is fantastic. Uh, I can't recommend it enough. Bitfocus Companion. You can go to bitfocus IO, give uh it a whirl and uh, I'm happy to show you some of the automations I've built because it makes your life that much easier.

Speaker B: That's cool. Yes, I love the hardware toys and there's lots of them out there. So will this work with anything or they have to support the certain piece of hardware?

Speaker C: Ah, a lot of the plugins that you use, or modules as they call them or connections, um, work for a whole fleet of things like there's one for LG TVs and it works for a majority of LG TVs out there. It's also all based on publicly documented APIs. So if you want to get your hands dirty as long as you have an API you can use almost any AI out there to build that module for you. But there's a very active community out there so chances are uh, someone's already built something for it.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: Great. Well thank you for that one cool thing. I'm going to check that out to go with my many different devices that I have. Um, well, Monica. Well Katie, we've come to the end of uh, we're about to hit summer of 2026. So um, yeah, this is our season four as uh, we're wrapping up here. Thank you as always to Film Tools for helping make this possible and Pro Video Coalition and um, you know, enjoy the summer and to all listeners, thank you for the, for the, for listening, for chatting. We uh, we get in chats in live and in person online and we appreciate any comments and commentary and um, you know we're always. And if you disagree, I love to talk to people who disagree with things I have to say. So it was some of the most engaging and fun conversations. So yeah. So let us know and until next time, thank you all and happy. Ah, happy summer.

Speaker C: Have a good vacation folks.

Speaker B: Mhm.